If you were like me last night, you went to Twitter to see live, up to moment reporting of damage on the East Coast due to Hurricane Sandy. I have family in New York and New Jersey and the power of the storm made me very scared for their safety. So far, the only report from them I've heard is a tree branch hitting a car. Others have not been so lucky.

But in between some eerie and just plain horrifying pictures, there was one tweeter who seemed to be tweeting out a lot of information that others needed to then correct, thereby sending the twitterverse into a lot of confusion at a time when the chaos was already overwhelming. That tweeter? @Comfortablysmug

What leads a person to do such a thing, which his critics have likened to shouting “fire” in a crowded movie theater? It’s unclear. But perhaps it has something to do with the nature of anonymity. If there are no consequences for posting false “BREAKING” news, there’s an incentive to do it to an accumulate a large audience.

What @comfortablysmug didn’t count on, apparently, was losing that anonymity. Based on photos he censored and posted to the account but I found unedited elsewhere, @comfortablysmug is Shashank Tripathi, a hedge-fund analyst and the campaign manager of Christopher R. Wight, this year’s Republican candidate for the U.S. House from New York’s 12th congressional district.FEC documents show Wight has paid Tripathi thousands of dollars this election cycle as a “consultant.” @comfortablysmug has been a vocal supporter of Mitt Romney and posted tweets suggesting he attended this year's Republican convention.

Yeah, it's petty. But for millions of New Yorkers and others along the Eastern seaboard, this was quite literally a life and death situation. And to purposefully send out false information that could lead to slower response times for actual emergencies is just unconscionable.

But then again, when do Republicans show concern for actual lives in the balance?

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Rico has a valid point. When Walker got caught setting up a private router in his office that was a big deal. When Rove got caught using private email accounts that was a big deal. To be able to save emails for historical purposes we need to be able to know and have access to those emails. All of them not just the ones you want saved. Regardless of political party.

Man, I don't know WHY so many people watch tv so much nowadays, but... I do agree, Gotham is a really good show. It's kinda like, "What if everyone in batman was young and were in gotham at the same time". It's pretty neat.